PINE FAMILY 



about a central axis ; anthers subglobDse, pale yellow, two-celled ; 

 connective pointed. Pistillate flowers oblong, pedunculate ; com- 

 posed of many orbicular rose red scales spirally arranged about a 

 central axis ; each scale in the axil of a pale rose colored bract with 

 a long green tip. Upon each scale lie two naked ovules. 



Coius. — Bright chestnut brown, oblong, obtuse, one half to three- 

 fourths of an inch long and borne on a short, stout, incurved stem. 

 Scales about twenty, the largest near the middle, the smaller at base 

 and apex. Cone falls durmg second year. Seed one-eighth of an 

 inch long, pale, with pale brown wings broadest in the middle. 



" Give me of your roots, O Tamarack! 

 Of your fibrous roots, O Larch-Tree I 

 My canoe to bind together 

 So to bind the ends together • 

 That the water may not enter 

 That the water may not wet me." 



— Henrv W. Longfellow. 



One feature distinguishes the Tamarack from the other 

 northern conifers, it sheds its leaves in the autumn of the 

 year in which they are produced ; they turn a dull yellow and 

 fall as do those of the poplar and the maple. This is a tree 

 of the swamps and it serves a very valuable purpose in the 

 economy of nature. When in those northern lands where 

 it makes its home, a small lake has silted up from the sur- 

 rounding country and so far dried that the rushes disappear 

 from the margin and a coating of soil covers it ; the Tamarack 

 creeps down and takes possession and the result is a Tama- 

 rack swamp. It is often possible to push a pole down ten 

 feet into the mud about the roots of the trees of such a 

 swamp. The roots developed there, long, tough, stringy are 

 those Hiawatha needed for his canoe, those growing in dryer 

 soil are not so flexible. The Tamarack will go up the hill- 

 side, it can live on dry land, but it loves the swamp and will- 

 ingly yields the hillside to the spruces. In summer a Taina- 

 rack ,vamp is dark, cool, mossy ; in winter the appearance is 

 somewhat desolate because the leaves are gone and one in- 

 stinctively thinks of a leafless conifer as a dead tree. 



The Tamarack and the Black Spruce go side by side tow- 

 ar the North Pole ; but at the ultiinate boundary, at the very 



478 



